A Baby (boy) Shower

This month I had the pleasure of hosting my cousin's (who is like a sister) baby shower.  She chose to wait until after baby was born to have it. She didn't find out if she was having a boy or a girl and she wanted to get lots of stuff that was for a specific sex. 

I made an adorable invite on photoshop, which I'm not going to share because it has his picture and all of is info on it. We had the party at the new grandma's house for space reasons.  So I didn't want to get to carried away with decorations.  Plus it makes for a lot of extra work.  I don't recall decorations from one shower I've been to over the years.  But I do remember key pieces that were really unique.  So  I made the most adorable diaper wreath (if I do say so myself) for decor.

The menu was delicious of course and made all by me that morning.  We had deviled eggs, cheesy potatoes (a recipe I completely made up that day!), little wieners, pasta salad, snicker salad and cake and punch.  Naturally I got the punch idea from Pinterest.

I did mine slightly different than the recipe.  I used white grape juice, 7 up, vanilla ice cream and blue food coloring.  None of the 3 grocery stores I tried had blue colored kool-aid.  Plus, I did not want the added sugar.  I tried a batch at home using blue Gatorade that tasted a little different, but still wasn't blue enough to emulate water.  The food coloring version was delish!

Whenever we have lots of family together, we always take the opportunity to update our 5 generation picture.  This is mine.  We are SO blessed!

We played 3 games.  First was a trivia game I made.  I created this using facts I found on the Internet.  I have created a free download for you to use - not the typo I have! oopsie!.  And if you want specific sighting or you want to fact check the answers, just google the questions.  

The trivia game I created has a typo! Oops! It's a nice ice breaker I suppose! :)

And the answers!

 Second was "guess what's in the bag" where you put miscellaneous baby items into lunch bags, number them, and then have everyone guess what's in the bag by feeling them.  I used all items you would find in a diaper bag to make it a little less complicated.

 Lastly we played gift bingo. I used the free cards I found.  But if you google "baby shower bingo card", you will get a lot of options to choose from.  You use the gifts the mom receives as your bingo squares and then whoever gets bingo at the end wins the prize.  If no one gets bingo, then the host can call out random items until someone gets bingo.  Of course this generated a 3 way tie for the last gift when I did it.  So I had a few extra baby trivia facts I didn't use on the first game.  I used the question, what's the average time it takes a dad to change the diaper?  They all guessed a time, and whoever got closest to the real answer won. 

I wanted all my prizes to me things I had made.  So this part was a lot of fun too!

2 votive candles, a bar of soap and a lip balm

dish cloths (I love those!), a bar of soap and a lip balm

a brag book made from toilet paper rolls and scrapbook supplies, a bar of soap and a lip balm

Like I said, that part was LOTS of fun! :)  I also of course, made my gift for the mom and baby too.  Another puff quilt...

It was a pretty easy event to put together.  And with fairly minimal stress! If there is enough interest, I'll do future posts on the specific parts of the shower (how I made the diaper wreath, my recipes, the puff quilt, etc)  Thanks for checking this out!

Tutorial Tuesday - Charts for stuff I hate having to remember

I have been throwing around a new idea for Mondays.  And it's not fully developed hence my lack of post yesterday.  Shame on me.  And I have been scouring my brain and the internet for something post worthy sine last night.  It was a struggle, but if finally dawned on me.  I have so much going on in life and so at least twice that in my brain.  I hate having to try to pull old files I rarely use from the memory bank or things I don't think about often. So today is not a tutorial, sorry! But here are a few handy charts, hopefully you can free up some brain space too.

If you are like me, you like a visual.  This site also offers explinations to how to create each stitch along with this cool picture chart.  Very nice! No more looking it up in one of my books or online!

I always wonder what size A39 is.  Ok, so there is no A39.  But I do find it frustrating trying to figure out what size is which.  And it happens more than you think.   Like when I'm ordering new blank cards and envelopes or when I'm trying to print something on a different size.  Maybe you have similar frustrations. 

Print this off and tape it by your computer. 

This next one happened to me just yesterday at Joanns when I went in for more Nylon Strapping.  I needed exactly 75" to finish my bag.  Silly me, I thought the professionals at Joann would know how many yards that is.  I was wrong.  To bad I didn't have one of these in m wallet to give the poor girl. The very nice gal who put this together even did it in a few different colors so you can pink. I had to go with yellow of course! :)

Thank you for a nice job and something every crafter will need eventually!

I LOVE hanging my pictures on the wall because some are just so great I want to see them everyday, not just when I look at the scrapbooks.  But I always end up with an overpopulation of frames and it looks cluttered.  Enter this handy chart!

She even has actual photos of these layouts on the blog post.  So now you can actually see what it might look like.  Very genius!!

Ok. I was going to post some more, but trying to find them is clogging up the new ideas I'm getting.  So this will have to do for today! :)

Quiet Books...officially added!

I've probly missed the boat on this one as far as my own kids go.  But I've wanted to make a quiet book for quite some time now.  And starting today it's officially on the list.  I have lots of ideas of things I would like to put into said book, but when I sit down to plan each page and make my materials list, I always draw a blank or feel overwhelmed. 

Fortunately, like nearly everything else on the internet, there are TONS of other people who have already posted about it. :) Yay! So for my (and maybe your) crafty motivation, here are some great books.

This one is a really cute book for little boys.  And I like the way she did the binder rings/eyelets inside the binding so they don't show on the outside.

This is just a part of this adorable book! What an adorable version of a quiet book.  It's a flip book featuring a bunch of cute characters. Very fun idea!



Ok - love this one for 3 reasons.  1) It looks like a scrapbook 2) NO SEWING! and 3) this particular one blends religous pages and other pages for a perfect church book



Another NO SEW book, this crafty mama used her cricut! One of the greatest inventions ever made.

Hide and seek pages among other things on this blog.  This post is only mid way through - so you might find some other ideas there too.

If you are interested in doing a quiet book for a little someone in your life, you may already have found the go-to quiet book blog.  But if not, you are in luck! All things quiet book found here. 

So let me know if you are adding a quiet book to your list of to-make items.  I'd love to share ideas and see your progress!

Missing the good ole' days

I recently started the dreaded task of going through the never ending boxes that seem to multiply while I sleep.  I found one that I had put a bunch of random stuff in from when I was pregnant with my first baby.  The best find was a nearly brand new skein of yarn.  We used it to play a game.  We passed it around with a scissors and then everyone had to cut the length they thought was my lovely circumference. Later, I used the longest piece(which was way to long!) as a border to one of her scrapbook pages. 

Anyway, the yarn is beautiful! Red Heart Super Saver Yarn Pinata E300-723.

But of course it is discontinued.  Naturally, I looked on Ebay because "you can find anything there".  Except, Red Heart Super Saver Yarn Pinata E300-723.  And then I did a general google search which returned many of those generic sites, like shop.com or something strange I would never trust.  I found one craftish website that was selling them for 11.37 per skein plus shipping.  Yikes! I guess I will just keep looking or find a one skein project!

There are lots of things that are no more that really should be.  My grandma must have loved her Tupperware lady (and who doesn't!?) because we had all the usual Tupperware toys. Which are now referred to as "vintage". Ouch.  Some of my favorites were the the dishes, the stencils and busy blocks. Grandma must have thought we would eat the animals or something because I don't remember ever having those.

Tupperware Busy Blocks

We didn't have a lot of money growing up. But we still had the BEST time playing with what we had.  One of my and my sister's favorite things to play with were these child size houses my dad made us.  He had gotten some very large boxes. (like appliance boxes, but ours were from the local implement)

This isn't one of ours, but closely resembles it!

Of course we were free to color and draw and write whatever we wanted.  It was wonderful! Anyone who has kids or has seen kids know what a huge hit any box can be.  So imagine if they had a big one that looked like a house they designed!? Can't wait till the next time you buy a new washer or dryer? Hit up any of the appliance stores.  I know they have more than enough cardboard.  And I bet they wouldn't mind giving it away free!